Mmmmmm, new Zu. More than five years since their last proper full-length, the Italian destruction squad suits up in full riot gear and preps the sonic weaponry for dispersal: sax unsheathed, guitar greased, drum heads tightened. Like NYC’s ferocious avant-“jazz” ensemble Little Women or record-collection neighbors ZS, Zu purvey a strain of maximalist skronk that pushes their limited instrumentation into the realms of the alien and the ecstatic. Conventions of melody and harmony are banished to the back of the paddy wagon, while texture, timbre, and climactic structure ride shotgun, spitting seeds out the window onto the tar-stained pavement. The band finds you half-unconscious in the alley behind the bar. They shake you awake with a peal of sax to the face. You wipe the cold out of your eyes and decide to follow them, as if you have a choice.
Jam “Cortar Todo,” our second taste of the band’s forthcoming album of the same name (due March 23 on Mike Patton’s Ipecac Records), and let Zu’s full-power crunch into your brain, courtesy of The Quietus. The band grinds through a barbed wire riff, as inklings of guitar and sax screech cut through the din, before escalating into full-on battery around the halfway point. Wait for the massive leads that carry the track out to its conclusion, and lift one fist in solidarity with bedlam.
• Zu: https://www.facebook.com/vajrazu
• Ipecac Recordings: http://ipecac.com/